Deisler123

Let me clarify if what I mentioned before was unclear - the 50m is the maximum amount Xia's satellite company can loan over the future two years. These loan will be from Chinese banks (apparently) and will be backed up by the mother company (i.e. the one on the stock market).

1) we don't know for sure that the £50m loan will be used to support Villa. However, considering the fact that the board meeting was held the same day when the saga emerged, it is highly likely so. It is possible that, soon after Xia received confirmation from the board, he acted to suspend Wyness. Then the unpaid tax thing emerged. Today the club confirmed that the tax bill is no longer a concern, which may be a sign of Xia having already found some money to resolve this (at least partially). 2) Getting £50m cash loan is not easy. £50m is the upper limit over two years. So quite possibly, if 1) is true, then Xia will try to get loan to fill the gap (tax bill and wages) first over the summer, and attempt to sell players to break even. I don't think we need £50m now to survive, mostly likely around 3-4m cash investment per month, before the income on the transfer market, if any. £50m may well be Xia's own worst-case scenario estimation of how much he will need to get the club going over the next two years.

i am not sure it is easy to check to be frank. The reason why we know the stock market annoucements is that Xia's company MUST declare all board meetings minutes under legal obligations. However, it will be the satellite company which will attempt to loan up to 50m from banks, sponsored by the mother company. So I am afraid it is impossible to know what happens next, until the day when the club financial issue gets resolved (which is the sign of Xia investing that loaned 50m into the club).

This is not quite accurate. What happened 2 days ago was that, the executive board of Xia's company approved that the main company will sponsor the child-company to loan up to 50m pounds over the next two years. This does not mean that Xia has loaned 50m two days ago, but it does mean that Xia has had the approval to do so.

I certainly hope so. But from the historical stories told by you guys on this forum, I can only conclude that good things never happen to Villa. So, no.

That is true. His business has lost in market value hundreds of millions of CNY. It has been extensively reported in China since 2017.

Change of ownership could be good, but equally it could be bad. Now the club is a black hole sucking in tens of millions of pounds worth money every year. So even Xia sells the club for 1 pound, I don't think a lot of sensible businessmen would take that. From Tony's point of view, selling Villa may get 10m-20m back to his pocket (optimistically), but that leads to almost 100m+ net loss in two years for his own wealth. If we are only talking about business decisions, then a sensible one for Xia now is to borrow 40-60m to keep the club running for the next two years to achieve a break-even. From evidence I am seeing now, that is precisely what he is doing now. To me, if he sells club for a super cheap price (which is likely considering the debt we have), then that is a stupid decision.

I don't think CEO is the only problem here. Xia needs to take the blame too. It does not take my grandma more than 1 second to realise a company will not survive for too long if you pay employees rocket high salaries and make net loss every single month. And that is precisely what AVFC is doing right now. They gambled, and they lost. Next step is key - can we have a CEO (clearly Wyness will not become CEO anymore under Xia) who is able to slash the wage bill by 1-1.5 million per month (we have almost achieved half of that now) and make another 0.5 million saving from somewhere else. This will reduce the net monthly loss to a manageable position, with the help of transfer fee income (which must be in the region of 15m-20m to save us).

There are quite a few assumptions in that article but I do agree with the rough estimation of investment Xia has put in over the last 2 years (I think the actual net spending is slightly lower than that but not far off). From many reports I have read, the core of all this is that Xia's business in China has been doing very badly since 2017, losing hundreds of millions of CNY. So he may not have the ability to continue the cash investment now without borrowing. Worth noting, China stock market commission released 4 announcements on 5/June (the day when this saga emerged, interestingly on the same day Xia was having an executive boarding meeting near Shanghai) in relation to Xia's company: (use google translate if you want: http://data.eastmoney.com/notices/stock/000662.html) - see top 4 announcements. Most information there is boring but one message is: the board approved a maximum of (approx.) 50m GBP loan from the banks over the next two years to be used for his 'satellite-company' for 'smart-city business'. If this is related to AVFC (quite possibly IMO, but we don't know yet), then this is probably what he will have to save his club. If he starts to make perfect decisions from now on, then 50m might be enough. But that is a big IF.

To be honest, manager is the least concern in all this. Villa clearly have a bad financial problem to face, and a sensible decision now is to stabilize the ship and make even. during this summer Xia will certainly try to at least keep the club running (which means he needs to find 5m funds now and potentially 10-20m to fill the hole). Selling players and assets is inevitable. I was chatting to a friend in China earlier today who is a football journalist, and we both agreed that Xia will most probably try to survive ( in terms of club running) during the summer. If things turn out to be so bad after the transfer window (meaning not enough funds from selling players to break even, or not sustainable cash flow from China), then he might consider selling shortly before the season starts and it may drag into the middle season, which is the worst case scenario for the club. Regarding the manager, I don’t think Xia will want to sack the manager before he cleans the mess of tax bill and Wyness-issue, unless Bruce resigns himself. If the financial situation is so bad that we have to sell many players to survive, then we will not be able to attract any decent manager. In that case, keeping Bruce will be the sub-optimal option I am afraid.

I mentioned a few times that I believe Xia has little cash now to spend on Villa, which is worrying. If you think that is me saying 'everything is going to all right', then sure, whatever.

@sne I have been following this thread and others since yesterday, but decided not to comment on anything, because I don't think there is much verified information out there that could lead to fair/useful judgement/discussion. But since you have @ me so i would put my 2 cents here based on my own take on all this. It is important to say here that all below is my own analysis and I do not speak for anyone or any organisation. I will do it in a Q&A fashion, trying to respond to a few questions in this thread: Q1: What is the current situation of government policy on transferring money out of China? A1: Any money transfer to an overseas bank requires approval from 'someone'. ANY, literally. If you are a parent wanting to transfer pounds to your son in the UK, you have to declare your attention. And if you do that many times a year, totalling above a certain threshold (approx. 40k pounds per year), the bank may refuse your transfer or you may have to get a reference letter from your work/local authority, which is difficult. If you are a company wanting to transfer cash, then things are MUCH more difficult, nearly impossible. It requires a few different levels of approval and may 'spend' a good relationship with local government and the bank. There are cases where big state-owned companies still manage to do this, but those normally are 'national strategic projects' so it will get approval easily. Q2: Why Wolves' Chinese owner managed to do that? A2: It must be pointed out that Guo, the owner of Wolves, is much richer, and his wealth can be 'assessed' (e.g. listed on Forbes, currently 22nd richest in China). More importantly, he owns lots of businesses across the world. This means he is not too much constrained, if he choose to, by the policy discussed above. However, no one knows if he has spent more than Xia did, or if Wolves financial situation is better than us if they didn't get the promotion this season. So I don't think comparing us to Wolves would give us more insight into what is happening to Villa. Q3: Is this similar to Milan/Inter's case? A3: What I know is, for Milan, the owner is the 'leader' of a consortium, and a lot of people pumped money in at the beginning to purchase the club (so effectively he borrowed money from them). Then he had to continuously borrow money to run a club, and now he has nowhere to go, simply because running a club does not give you profit. For Inter, it is a completely different story. The owner is Suning (Chinese version of Carrefour if you like). So they have more than enough money to run a club (and make some profit back because of ads effect in China), but still constrained by the currency policy though. I don't think Xia's case is similar to Milan at all (because I believe the funds he used to buy Villa were from his previous sold company), but he certainly is nowhere near Inter's case. His business does not seem to benefit from owning a club, which has little to none ads effect in China (before going back to Premier League), and he has very little cash in hands (because of his type of business). Q4: Surely a billionaire is able to gather millions of pounds of cash easily and pay the bill? A4: Firstly, the total worth of the companies he controlled may be very high, but that does not mean he has a lot of cash to spend freely. This is a false question to start with. However, it is worth noting that since the 2017, Xia's business has been pretty bad. He has lost a lot on the stock market for a few companies. In 2018, he fell off from the 'top 500 rich people list in China', and the 500th has wealth of 700M GBP. So it is fair to say that Xia's net worth now is less than 700M pounds, and his business is not doing well at the moment. It is likely that he does not have too much cash to spend at the moment. This, in addition to the 'unpaid tax bill', is indeed worrying. However, there has been rumors that this unpaid tax bill was created intentionally, without his knowledge. No one can verify this at the moment, we will have to see how things pan out. Q5: What could happen next? A5: We know Villa is having trouble because of FFP, and things will only get worse as time goes on (less income, huge salary bill). When you cannot do too much to boost the income in a lower division, the only viable option is to cut the bill. This could lead to less employees and selling players to fill the hole. I don't think in a short term Xia will be able to pump a lot of cash into the club, not only because it is not allowed by FFP, but also because of his current business situation. This means Villa will be much quieter in transfer market in the next few years, until we get promoted or he can turn around his business (not anytime soon as far as I can see). I can't see him selling Villa now - He is not that desperate at least for now, hopefully, to cash out in order to save his business in China. It is funny how much a single match could change the destiny of a football club. This is very cruel indeed.

I am sorry but I don't think many will have the mood to discuss this now. Today's match was so disappointing... Hope I will forget today's match as soon as I can. I probably won't.

Will have a half day off from work today after lunch. Ordered a villa scarf and arrived yesterday. Will wear it for the whole match when watching it in front of TV. Big match. Super excited and nervous. Com'on Villa.

oh well well well

Well.... didn’t know that. Thanks. Planned to take kids to the zoo on that day... have to annoy wife again I guess.

First time in the last two years - I am not too bothered by the score of a Villa game, in a good way. Wife is delighted that I am not going to sit in front of TV this coming weekend, but got annoyed when I told her I have to stay at home for the following two Saturdays (12nd/19th). Can't wait to watch the Wembley play-off final in 2 weeks time!

6 games to go and we are 7 points behind. assuming we beat Cardiff, we will have 5 games to close 4 points gap. Is it doable? Yes. Do I think if we can do this? Absolutely!!!!

Or a 80 years old player....

I have been a Milan fan for years, and this Neves reminds me of Montolivo. Great side passes, but not that good in through balls and dribble. Jack, on the other hand, is a much more direct play er. His dribbling is much better and his forward running can create direct chances. dont think they are the same type of players but I don’t think Neves is that good from what I saw today. He looks like a young Cesc, but without forward passing. Need time to grow to play in premier league.

It is not that bad as Wanda has been selling their assets like crazy in the last 12 months, including domestic and overseas. They sold a lot of cinemas and shopping centers in China. Athletico Madrid is a tiny bit of his money. Rumour said Jianlin Wang got trouble with govn due to some sensitive reasons. Even his son takes much lower profile now. Dont think this is a sign related to Villa. The restrictions have been there for a couple of years already.

I found this forum accidentally and at that time I wasn't a Villa fan. I didn't come on here to troll or be provocative, same as you. Then when I came here every single day to talk to people, I technically became a Villa fan. I can see you are being converted, without you noticing that.

It was a genuine question - I can recognise that being a Japanese version of the TV drama about the Chinese classic 'Journey to the West'. I was surprised that it was even known to people in this country. Was it even broadcast here in the UK before? Sorry OOT.

Just curious, why do you use monkey king as your avatar image?

watched a youtube video. check what the fans were shouting at 10:14. You guys are absolutely genius. HAHAHA. Hilarious. PS: I dont care about the second part of that chant, but i hope the first part comes true at the end of this season.